I used to be Mushinja, but now I am botchan. In the Peter, James and John thread Elderolddog asked about former missionaries from the Tokyo South Mission who claimed to have never seen the crazy things people claimed happened, basically defending President Groberg. I said I didn't think that would be possible, but in this thread I want to go a little deeper.

I was in one of the first groups to enter the brand new TSM. My senior companion had been in the Nagoya Mission and the other senior in our apartment had been in the Tokyo Mission. They both said the new president wasn't nearly as spiritual and loving as their former presidents. They weren't impressed. For the first few months Groberg didn't changed too many things, but he slowly built up a loyal group of new missionaries who considered him our president, and some of the older missionaries who liked his down to business approach.

After about six months, maybe less, month by month he began rolling out his new "inspired" methods. Of course no-one could see the future, so I think most people were fairly gung-ho, at least in the beginning. I never liked Groberg, but I wanted to have a successful mission, so I followed the plan as best I could. Then in his second year things went crazy. If you weren't one of his faithful elite who baptized dozens, then hundreds a month, (I wasn't) you just did what you needed to do to survive until you went home, trying to avoid his scorn as much as possible.

Now to Elderolddog's question. IF you went home during Groberg's first year, and IF you ignored where things were going at that time, and IF when you went home you didn't hear any of the stories from returning missionaries, then I suppose you could say that you didn't see any of it. Otherwise, I don't think anyone could have possibly not seen what was happening. I know many people who have lied about it. Some to themselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2022 06:41AM by botchan.

https://runtu.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/more-on-the-mormon-missionary-numbers-game/

At the end of the ‘comments’ section of the above post are three responses that are the heart of defense of Groberg as an MP.

Your response after review of them would be much appreciated. I refer specifically to the responses from Alan, Douglas, Mike & Scott.


Blind men and an elephant?

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> https://runtu.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/more-on-the
> -mormon-missionary-numbers-game/
>
> At the end of the ‘comments’ section of the
> above post are three responses that are the heart
> of defense of Groberg as an MP.
>
> Your response after review of them would be much
> appreciated. I refer specifically to the
> responses from Alan, Douglas, Mike & Scott.
>
>
> Blind men and an elephant?

I'm not Mushinja/botchan but I'd like to chime in. Tokyo South alum here.

I vaguely remember the first three names inquired about. They weren't over the top gung-ho types, but diligent. Head in the cloud with rose colored glasses on. Their responses are typical of what most members say or think about people that don't have the same experience as them or talk negatively about the church. They dismiss us as wanting to sin or lazy apostates wanting to purposely talk about the church in a bad way.

The forth person was my first companion as I arrived in Tokyo. He was going home the next month. He only spent a short time under Groberg and didn't get to see the transformation that began after he was home. I did have a nice 1st month in Tokyo traveling around to dinner parties saying good-byes to his friends. We even left mission boundaries to take in a Kabuki play. He has no idea what the mission became after he left.

My second comp was going home in a few months too. He was an old Nagoya mission elder. He didn't enjoy Grobergs style.

Some of the stories over the years have been embellished for more effect but most are true. I did see 1 day baptisms. We had portable fonts in most apartments to accomplish this task. High baptizing elders were rewarded with dinners at Grobergs house. Non-baptizing elders had to attend bitch out sessions and were demoted. If you didn't have the right personality it was a very difficult place to be. (Personally, I was only Sr for a month or two and then demoted for most of my time.) I just tried to stay under the radar and put in my time.

I returned to Japan within a year after I finished. I love Japan and it was great not being a missionary. I still had elders apartment phone numbers and met with a few elders that were friends. They said it had gotten even worse after I left.

I came home and tried to forget about the whole experience. But if people think the stories or bad reputation the church got at this time are not true, I can tell you 2 stories.
First, I was traveling to Japan once and noticed a Japanese family on my flight out of St George to LA. Arriving in LA, I struck up a conversation as we waited for our flights to Japan. I never tell people why I can speak Japanese. I just say I spent time there when I was college age. It was October and they came for conference and then toured the National Parks. They figured it out that I was a RM and of TSM. The mother of the family lit into me about all the problems that we caused at that time. "You should be ashamed of the things you did." "The missionaries at that time gave the church such a bad image." "We can't find any of the people you guys baptized." And on and on she scolded me. I hadn't heard or read all these stories online before that because I was trying to forget about the whole thing.
Second, another time I attended church in Osaka just for grins. Only time I've went to church in Japan since mission days. In Japanese fashion they introduced me at the beginning of the service and mentioned that I was a TSM RM. After the meeting a lady approached me to talk. She was also a TSM alum. I couldn't remember her but the first thing she says is, "We didn't do anything wrong did we? We just followed our priesthood leaders." To me, that told me she had been hearing and receiving backlash from what went on in that mission.

So the stories and heartbreak are real. Poster Lot's Wife, knows and understands what went on in TSM more than some of the elders that still have their colored glasses on with their head in the sand.

Yeah, my sources include friends and relatives who experienced the Groberg era, some of whom let me peruse their journals. I've also read Groberg's Ph.D., and an academic article by someone whom I recall as Nomoto or Nemoto, something like that. I've additionally had a lot of things confirmed by you, mushinja/botchan, Flattop, and others who've posted here.

With regard to embellishment, yes, that's always a characteristic of people's individual and collective memories. Yet a lot of the horrific stories strike me as credible. The truth is that any human experience will unfold differently for different people. I have no doubt that some missionaries--particularly but not exclusively those who left within Groberg's first half year, during which time he hadn't yet got his system up and running--didn't see much wrong.

Conversely, other people inevitably had much worse than average experiences, depending on location, companions, and personal emotional constitution. So I do believe some of the more outlandish claims that I have heard, for in an over-pressurized engine like TSM, bolts pop off in all sorts of directions. I've also heard heartbreaking stories from missionaries in TNM and in Hokkaido, both of whose mission presidents tried to adopt the Groberg system.

I'm confident, mankosuki that you would know some of my sources. It's almost inevitable.

Thank you for sharing your experience. It must have been very difficult in your second year. Those were crazy, and highly unrealistic expectations for baptism.

Groberg came to my mission as a GA. I flipped off the camera when they took the picture of our zone with him.

I found out from my friend in the office about him. I had no idea. My friend organized the top of the line hotels and tours around my islands mission - the Canary Islands.

Groberg and my pres went snorkeling. I guess second anointing protects a missionary from the devil.

My shelf took a big hit and had a large crack from Groberg.

Based on the little that I know about "Groberg", you got the GA brother of the MP Groberg.

And ha-ha, I flipped off Joseph Fielding Smith, to his face, while at the old Salt Lake City Mission Home . . . albeit accidentally, according to my conscious mind.

Um, my apologies.

A Soseki allusion???

Love it!

Ah, yes I’ve read Runto’s post and the comments following it. Words that come to mind are, denial, rationalization, justification and simply lying for the lord. Remember, these are people who accept everything Joseph Smith and Brigham Young did. They justify polygamy, denying blacks the priesthood and everything else the church has done. There was probably a lot of cognitive dissonance involved as well.

I will cut the last poster, Scott L., some slack. He’s a good egg. He thrived under Groberg’s new methods, but I think he honestly meant well, and went home before Groberg really got into gear.

To be honest, from a 19 year old missionary point of view, in the beginning Groberg’s methods didn’t seem so bad. Instead of housing (tracting) we would hang out in front of busy train stations and shopping arcades starting up conversations with people our own age, and inviting them to come to our apartment to talk. It sounds creepy now, but among the hundreds of people milling around the station, there was no shortage of naïve curious young people willing to follow us. And among those who came, we would occasionally find someone willing to listen to the lessons, and among them occasionally someone willing to be baptized. It didn’t seem so bad, especially when you were trying to convince yourself it was inspired from god.

Then the pressure started. “The elders in xxx baptized a hundred people last week, why didn’t you?” “Obviously you aren’t working hard enough.” “You must not love the lord.” This from your mission president, a man you were supposed to respect and follow. And that was just the beginning.

Even trying to keep my integrity as best as I could, I probably baptized more people than most missionaries in other missions, something I’m definitely not happy about now, but I was a miserable failure in Groberg’s eyes.

Fortunately there were others like me. We tried to do the best we could while keeping some semblance of self respect, and helping each other survive.

Sorry, that was longer than planned.

Hi Mankosuki, I’m sure we crossed paths many times during our missions. I always enjoy your comments.

I came across an old post I made several years ago.

I remember one interview I conducted as a DL: The "golden" college-aged young man had no intentions of giving up his cigarettes or alcohol, nor did he know he was expected to. He laughed when I asked about the law of chastity. He didn't have a clue who Joseph Smith or SWK were, and wasn't real big on the whole God thing. When I asked him why he had agreed to be baptized, he said it was because the missionaries really seemed to want him to, and since they were teaching him English for free (he had met them five days earlier) he thought it was the least he could do.

When I suggested we postpone the baptism one week so that he could have a couple more lessons, he readily agreed, and when I went to get the missionaries who had "taught" him, he slipped out a side door, never to be seen again.

Needless to say, they were not pleased, and the next day I received a call from Groberg who let me have it with both barrels for costing the mission a baptism. When I related the interview, he said that didn't matter - I had robbed the young man of an opportunity to receive the gift of the holy ghost, and that even if he never came back, he would have been better off being baptized.

> Sorry, that was longer than planned.


No. But it was shorter than I'd hoped for. Not bitchin', just letting you know that having served '65 - '67, I have a lot of time available to read, and I do love working on deconstructing la iglesia mormona. You'll likely understand in a couple of years!

I've done a lot of reading about the Groberg era and I've been a student of the human condition for quite some time, so there was no inclination on my part to even begin to give the Groberg defenders any credence.

Thanks for your service! ; > )

For botchan and Lot's Wife

Undoubtedly we know some of the same people. Birds of a feather flock together or something like that. You learned quickly which elders you had to watch your words or actions around and were the ladder climbers.
We had so many conferences, pass off conferences, special conferences, mission conferences, zone conferences, batsu conferences, that we for sure crossed paths a few times.

I remember one story about someone not passing a baptism interviewee and "fun" hitting the fan. I'm sure it happened more than once too.

mankosuki Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I remember one story about someone not passing a
> baptism interviewee and "fun" hitting the fan.

That was probably me. ;-)

Lot's Wife, Botchan was the first work of Meiji Period literature I read in the original Japanese, many years ago. It's also what we sometimes call my little grandson. :-)

My family is close to a number of Japanese families. One of them, the family we remain friendliest with, called my youngest son "botchan" as well.

And I have read Botchan albeit in English.

On topic.

The protagonist in Botchan is like some Mormon missionaries: Called to a far-away land, he doesn’t understand the local culture, and looks down on the people he’s called to serve with a mixture of condescension, contempt, and cynicism.

Okay, maybe I took it too far?

There's so much interesting literature from the period in which Japan was "modernizing." Any chance you're familiar with Izumi Kyoka? Bizarre, gothic stuff, some of which is very beautiful.'

I like Snow Country, too, though I think Tanizaki stole the train trip up into the mountains from Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain.

I’ve never read Izumi Kyoka, but The Holy Man of Mount Koya has been on my list of books to read “someday” for a long time. Maybe nows the time. Thank you.

He's a bit like Kafka in the sense that some of his stories work, others don't work, and in many instance his painting of a single scene is transcendent.

I've read him from time to time, when the mood strikes, but remember in particular a story decades ago in which the protagonist enters a rural train station on a snowy evening and sees a prostitute sitting quietly on a bench. The story is little more than a depiction of her; he uses about a dozen different words for "red" in his haunting narrative. The use of color resembled Dostoevsky's use of yellow in Crime and Punishment.

The Japanese vantage point, the sensibility to hue and flora, is inimitable, I think.

Snow Country? By Kawabata?
The train station where this novel unfolded has a display of the main love interest. Also inside the station is a nice place to sample sake from the region. 500 yen and you get 5 tokens that you can use in the vending machines. Around 100 different types to sample. Get a hotel close to the station. Ahaha
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NxNRvfMihI0

Yes, I meant Kawabata.

My reference to Mann is because both authors use a train trip through mountains to lift the protagonist/s into a separate realm, a place that differs in important ways from quotidian life. If you read the passages side by side, you'll probably see what I mean.

Mann published his book in the 1910s, I believe, or the early 20s; and Yukiguni came a decade or two later. So it's possible that Kawabata was aware of it.

Tasting the sake in that setting sounds nice. My wife and I are enjoying a bit of a sake boom right now. We just finished a bottle from Iwakuni that our daughter-in-law's brother sent us.

This little diversion into Japanese culture, which I'm enjoying, has reminded me of something that is back on topic.

I fell in love with Japan within the first week of my mission, and nothing Groberg did affected that. Not even a little. I'm sure that helped me survive his antics.

Into my second year, which corresponded with Groberg's second year, I became part of a network of missionaries who had the following in common: We were faithful members (at least on the surface); we wanted to have successful missions on our own terms and worked hard in our own ways; we loved Japan; and we hated Groberg and what he was doing. We told ourselves that we were baptizing more people than most other missionaries in Japan, and more of our baptisms were staying active than those of Groberg's minions. I don't know if either of those was true, and hope everyone I baptized is now long gone from the church, but at the time it's what we told ourselves to keep motivated.

I stayed active for a few years after my mission, and my reasons for leaving were not directly related to it. But even when I was active I didn't talk about my mission. Japan, yes - but not my mission.

I can relate to the network of missionaries that just tried to stay busy and not be among the Groberg minions. No doubt that we would know each other. We probably even had lunch together on conference days if we were ever in the same zone.

Can relate to not talking about my mission too. I never tell anyone. IRL, I think I've only talked about it seriously to my sister. She was talking about her kids serving missions and I told her I'd never expect, advise or pressure my kids to go because of the rotten experience I'd had. I was on the Mormon hampster wheel and the mission experience had nothing to do with me leaving the church either.

Liking Japan? 当たりまえ。I don't have more than 30 entry stamps in my passport for nothing. I've taken my parents, my kids numerous times so they might be able to understand why I'm like I am.

Much of that fits what I've learned.

First, there were two missions in Tokyo South: the overt one and the covert one. I can't remember the exact terminology--it was from Star Wars--but from a couple of people I heard something like "The Empire" versus "The Rebellion." It was a jocular way of describing their underground.

Second, I have heard that most of the RMs from TSM didn't talk about their missions afterwards. One of them refused to do a homecoming speech. For sharing what happened would alienate them from their home communities. No one could conceive of a "bad" mission, and anyone who spoke of one would find himself ostracized from family and friends.

Third, some of the RMs I know ended up at the same elite university. I was told that well over half of the (small number of) students in the student ward were refugees from either TSM or one of the other missions under Kikuchi's sway. But those RMs did not talk with each other about their missions and the wounds they suffered. In one case it was a decade before two of them (one was from TNM) realized they'd both gone through the same hell and began to open up.

I am tempted to think it was a bit like the alienation a lot of soldiers feel after returning to their homes. They've seen destruction, killing, sometimes even war crimes, and then go home to a place and people who cannot comprehend what they had experienced.

Epilogue

I returned from my mission in the early summer of 1980, and went to BYU that fall. One day a year later - fall, 1981 - I was walking along the quad on my way to watch a chambara film being shown somewhere on campus, figuring I’d bump into someone I knew when I got there, when I heard someone calling my name. It was a former companion who had just returned the month before. He was very eager to talk with someone who understood what he had been through. I invited him to the movie and as we walked he told me all about Groberg’s third year. He also told me about the missionary we had lived with who started drinking beer regularly without even attempting to hide it. He had a lot of baptisms, so what are ya gonna do? He also told me about President Inoue’s clean up efforts and all the people who got sent home, including our drinking friend.

When we arrived at the venue and got in line, my companion pointed with his eyes at the people just in front of us. It was two people who had been very much Groberg darlings; one who had also recently returned. They were basically having the same conversation as us, but from an entirely different perspective. At first they didn’t notice us because they were so deep into their conversation. (I was struck by how concerned the older one was about Groberg’s mental condition.)

When they finally noticed us they froze. We nodded, but they silently turned and just stared straight ahead. After a moment one grabbed the other’s elbow and they silently walked away. We just laughed and enjoyed the movie.

Let me be clear. I don’t think they were embarrassed or intimidated; they just didn’t want to associate with the riff-raff.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/2022 10:35PM by botchan.

I know one of the APs/Mps who was excommunicated when Groberg was replaced. Initials were DN.

Don't know how to start this story and I can see it 2 different ways now.

I went on a split once with an elder that I got along with. He wasn't a VIP member in Grobergs club but probably had more connection with him than I did. He was from Idaho so that probably pulled some weight. Anyway, we did something that wasn't kosher with being a missionary. I won't say what, but it wasn't really that bad. No orgy with the sister mishies or 3some with the Bishops wife. Nothing I think we could've been sent home for in my eyes, but still not missionary approved. Like Bishop roulette I suppose.
Well a few weeks later we had our bi-monthly interviews with the MP. We weren't in the same zone by then so we had interviews on different days. My elder friend got feeling the "guilty remorseful, unworthy" Mormon thing and let it out what we had done. Later that night the elder called me and told me that Groberg knew about it so I'd better come clean the next day when I had my interview. Groberg could have tried the "I discern that you have something to tell me elder" approach but he didn't. I give him credit there. Of course I came clean. He handled it well and without incident. He couldn't do anything to me that he didn't do to the elder that spilled his guts.

Anyway, maybe Groberg had a soft spot and didn't like to send elders home (neither me nor the other elder were one of his golden boys) or didn't know how to handle some situations and let things slide. OR if you were getting the numbers nothing was off limits.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/2022 04:19PM by mankosuki.

My impression was that yes, if you got the numbers nothing was off limits. One of the people I knew said as much; he and others were under so much pressure that they started blowing off steam with alcohol maybe some weed; in some instances, girls. Groberg knew, or should have known, what was going on but other than demoting someone for a month or two did nothing. His goal was numbers and church advancement.

But wasn't there another motive as well? Say Groberg sent one or two home for petty sins. Would that not have opened the way for one or two depressed missionaries to pack their bags and leave? And at what point would those losses awaken the somnolent David B. Haight and his colleagues on the missionary committee in SLC?

My view is that as time went by, Groberg found himself increasingly cornered. A lot of his senior missionaries were "sinning," and if he decided to enforce the gospel rules he'd have to send a clutch of them home. Then his career in the church would be ruined. We know what happened when Inoue took over, don't we? He excommunicated several of the missionaries, church HQ did an investigation (complete with opinion surveys of RMs), and Groberg and Kikichi were blackballed.

It doesn't surprise me at all that Groberg was tolerant of marginal sins. He couldn't let some failed missionaries ruin his numbers.

Again....Lots Wife has the great analysis. I think your take is spot on.

Thanks, mankosuki.

Is there somewhere we can access the complete story?

Start with the link in eod's post at the top.

Then just do a search on "Groberg" and you will get many threads discussing it.

I'm curious. Does anyone know anything about the Inoue presidency? Not talking about my mission resulted in me not knowing anything about post-Groberg TSM, aside from what my former companion mentioned earlier told me about Inoue's clean up.

When I heard that Inoue had been chosen as Groberg's replacement I was very pleasantly surprised. First of all, I had never heard of someone from within the mission boundaries being called as president - maybe it happens, but I'd never heard of it. Secondly, it showed me there was someone somewhere who had a clue. I even wondered if the local leaders had staged a rebellion, sitting Kikuchi, or maybe someone even higher up, down and telling them, "You will make Inoue president, and you will get this mess cleaned up." Not likely, I guess.

An aside about Inoue.

As the months passed after Groberg's arrival, of course no one could see yet what the future held, but it seemed many of the members were catching on that Groberg wasn't a loving, caring president, and they started getting concerned for the missionaries.

A couple of months towards the end of my first year I was transferred to Kichijoji. The missionary apartment was right next to the Stake Center, on church property, and Inoue would often stop by just to chat and see how we were doing. (I believe he was bishop at the time.) Sometimes he called us in for interviews just to make sure we were okay. I think he was picking up on things that even we weren't aware of yet.

A few months later I transferred to a different stake/district, and rarely saw him, but when we did bump into each other he always called me by name and when possible took the time to talk.

That observation fits my hypothesis below.

I may be able to provide some insight.

You guys in TSM weren't aware of the full picture. When your baptismal numbers skyrocketed, Kikuchi flew around the rest of his missions--I think they included the Japanese ones, South Korea and maybe HK and/or Taiwan--and demanded that everyone adopt the Groberg method.

Some MPs resisted the pressure and protected their missionaries, others did exactly what they were told. But most of the other Japanese missions lacked the population of Tokyo, and after you've stood at the local railway/subway station for a few days and then tracted out the whole town a couple of times, there's nowhere else to get investigators. So the pressure on the MPs and on the missionaries went way up and all sorts of problems developed.

Sapporo was hit hard. The MP there was apparently not a bad man but not strong, either, and he sent his MAs and ZLs to Tokyo to be trained in the Groberg method. They then returned to Hokkaido and taught the missionaries how to run up to people in the streets, ask if they wanted to learn about Jesus, and then run after someone else--until virtually the entire island avoided the missionaries like the plague.

After a year (?) or so the missionaries were in bad shape and by late 1981 there were people drinking and fighting, sexual misbehavior, some excommunications, some people just picking up and going home, etc. In January or February Kikuchi flew to Sapporo to interview some missionaries who were in open revolt--not sinning but challenging the way the mission was operating--and about to be excommunicated by the MP. Kikuchi decided they shouldn't be exed.

I was told Kikuchi seemed genuinely concerned, but now I wonder if he simply knew he was in trouble and didn't want any more bodies on the ground. Meanwhile a missionary in Tokyo North--who told me this many years later--went home weeping through the whole flight. His parents knew Haight, and they all met and discussed the problems. According to that RM, Haight said "things went much too far in Tokyo" although he did not admit to any mistakes.

My hunch is that by the spring of 1982 the Q15 were getting a lot of reports of bad things happening in TSM and were well aware of the disaster unfolding in several of Kikuchi's other missions as well. That would explain the selection as next MP of an "insider" who well knew Japan, Tokyo, Mormonism, and the Groberg debacle. He probably had a mandate to clean TSM up, which would explain why he was willing to excommunicate and send home several of your fellow missionaries almost immediately.

Does that make sense?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2022 02:35AM by Lot's Wife.

I can only imagine the PTSD that RMs suffered as a result of the Groberg era. Both a "tragedy" and a "crime" as botchan describes it.

Cuz X

See my reply to mankosuki below.

I think many missions and their presidents go thru different phases. And some missionaries denied when un-Mormony things happened- like an unprovoked ZL going wild and wailing on some elder. I had people who witnessed it before their eyes deny that such altercation ever occurred.

BTW, this TSM method of growing the church was still popular some 10 years after it was implemented. It made a mess of wards/branches and screwed up the psyche of missionaries who wanted to lay low and finish an "honorable" mission.

Could someone explain what exactly the Groberg Plan was. You have to understand many here don't know anything about all this.

Someone will go into more detail, but it was a plan to dramatically increase baptism numbers. From what I remember from other people's stories, the missionary discussions were speeded up, and a number of the baptisms were the same day as the first contact with the missionaries. I think they were done in the missionary apartments in some cases (special tubs were brought in.) Zone Leaders were on speed dial, and were able to quickly come to assist.

This (of course) resulted in a high number of garbage baptisms. The locals were dunked, never to be seen by the ward members again. This caused a lot of resentment among the ward members, who now had an extraordinary number of inactives on their roles.

As others have indicated, Groberg treated missionaries who could not or would not go along with his plan in an abusive manner.

Ok Thanks. I know on my mission we'd get an occasional visiting GA that would want us to speed things up a bit like doing the baptismal challenge on the first discussion but nothing quite that radical. You would have thought they learned their lesson with Dwyer.

For Lot's Wife, where do I send remittance for your counseling services? Your insight has been beneficial to me.

I only wish that I could tell more of the story as eloquently as you do. My wife(RIP)was the English major not me.

The elder that sobbed his whole flight home...I understand. I can't remember the flight at all. I remember a few hours layover in SF before connecting to SLC and them I'm blank until that night safely in my old room at home. I don't remember meeting family and friends or the drive home. After I was safely in my room I cried the whole night. Didn't sleep a wink. Maybe because of the time difference or now I'm thinking because I realized that it was finally over. I was safe. No more nightly stats to call in, no more rah rah conferences, no more scoldings for "only a few" baptisms.

Botchan. I never knew Inoue that I can remember. Never was close to Kichijoji ever. Spent majority of my time in Kanagawa and Shizuoka. Kichijoji was only for all mission conferences.

10-15yrs ago a personal acquaintance had a son serving in Tokyo. I told her I'd visit him on one of my trips to see how he was doing. Ended up meeting the companion set in Kichijoji where he was at the time. I treated them to a yakiniku dinner on Sunroad.(Sunroad is like a covered street like mall road, which not far from one end is the church) The mission home is or at least was at that time the old apartment next to the Stake Center. The elders rushed thru dinner and asked if I wanted to walk down and see. I declined as I was getting the heebyjeebies just being on Sunroad even after 25yrs.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2022 12:51PM by mankosuki.

Yes Lot’s Wife, thank you for your information and insights. Groberg’s mission was from early summer 1978 to 1980, so some of your dates may be a little off, but I think the overall picture you’ve drawn is spot on, and it’s been very informative.

Mankosuki, I spent many hours roaming Sun Road. The best fried rice I’ve ever had was at a tiny Chinese restaurant on a tiny side road to a side road in Sun Road.

We often walked past a flower shop, and became acquainted with the owner. He was very friendly and funny. (He dressed like a “yankee” - plastic pink sandals several sizes too small and all.) Sometimes he would stop a high school or college students and talk to them, pointing at us. Then he would wave us over and tell us “I got one for you.” And we would take them to the church. He didn’t know where we took them, or what we did there, but I guess we didn’t look too dangerous, and the students always came back in one piece, so he must have thought it was okay. He joked that we owed him a finders fee. He also told us he would give us lessons on how to snare more people, but that it would cost us. He even said he’d go with us himself to wherever it was we took people - but we’d have to pay him.

Hi Botchan,

I've done a quick review, and yes I did mess up the dates. According to his obituaries, Groberg became MP in the summer of 1978 and remained in that position until the summer of 1981, which makes sense given that MP's terms are for three years. The surge in baptisms in TSM, and hence in Japan's overall numbers, did not recede until the middle of 1982. Since it outlasted him, I'd probably date the Groberg Era to 1978-1982.

The reassertion of some semblance of discipline in TSM started six months before I thought, with Inoue in charge from July 1981 and the purge of senior missionaries occurring in (I think) November-December 1982. The interview with Haight took place in December 1981 or January 1982, and the events in the Sapporo mission occurred in the first several months of 1982. It was in that period--late 1981-mid 1982--that the really bad news in the other missions reached SLC and presumably led to William Bradshaw's decision, as executive administrator for Japan and Korea, to announce new and tighter baptismal standards in July 1982. I think that's the obvious endpoint for the Groberg/Kikuchi experiment.

Some highlights: during Kikuchi's tenure, the putative number of Mormons in Japan doubled from 35,000 to 70,000; and the number of country-wide baptisms (including all nine[?] missions) rose from a monthly average of a 200+ to 2000+. One church leader, a district president in Shizuoka, was disfellowshiped in April 1981 for writing to alert Groberg to the problems that were already glaringly obvious.

Fortunately, I found a couple of the sources to which I alluded in earlier posts. The more comprehensive of the two, by Numano, is

https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1063&context=mormonhistory

The shorter one, which contains good supplementary material and some excellent data is

http://wayback.archive-it.org/3609/20130419164906/http://elderkikuchi.blogspot.com/2010/05/heading-another-heading-row-1-cell-1.html

Thanks to you and mankosuki for bringing up this topic and for providing more facts and insights. Someone should write a dissertation to supercede Groberg's dissertation so that that terrible time is fully documented.

We can't let it be forgotten.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/30/2022 12:15AM by Lot's Wife.

Again, thank you Lot's Wife. You have done an excellent job of showing the whole picture. Yes of course, Groberg was 1978 to 1981. It was I who was 1978 to 1980. If my calculations are correct Mankosuki and I pretty much spanned all, or at least most of Groberg's term.

Also thank you for introducing Numano's paper. I had never seen that before, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who wanted to learn about that time. I feel there are two very important aspects he didn't cover however. First, he didn't mention the misadventures of many of the missionaries, and the resulting excommunications etc. Second was Groberg's systematic and cruel abuse of many missionaries, and the lives he scarred. To me that was the biggest tragedy of the whole affair, and his biggest crime.

Oh, and a big thank you to elderolddog for asking the initial questions. Have you been reading this?

Yes, I've been reading this...  When is the final exam?

Gladys Lot has been dragging me along for years now regarding the tales of TSM (not Thomas S. Monson) and I'm trying to polish up my master's thesis for submission to her.  If only she weren't such a b-i-o-t-c-h!

There he goes again, Jesus simply cannot manage to spell difficult words like b-i-o-t-e-c-h. That's why he works at a vape shop.

Yes, thank you for posting Numano's research. I had seen bits and pieces quoted before but never the whole paper with footnotes. Very informative.

I'm thinking that we were about 5-8mo apart in Japan, botchan. Groberg was there when I arrived and still there when I left. I was pretty much squarely in the middle of his term.

If the three of us ever find the time and energy, we could write and publish an account of what happened. I think that with the evidence we personally have, the records the scurrying archivists of RfM have accumulated, and the few factual accounts, there's the making of a useful article that would be relevant to Mormon history and and also to psychologists and cult specialists. For Groberg and Kikuchi built a cult within a cult.

And CUZX!, what you and Botchan say is absolutely correct. What got me interested in the topic was the immense pain inflicted on the missionaries and the lifelong consequences that ensued. The depression, the PTSD, the alienation from home communities, the guilt, the incredible loneliness, the altered educational and professional trajectories, the broken families, the intergenerational harm: the few written accounts capture but a fraction of what happened and what it meant.

Reading Numano's paper and some other things in this thread reminded me of the "dendo-shos" that we started at that time. Basically the mission and missionaries told the older members and the current ward/branch to get lost. "If your not going to help us we'll do it without you." Established congregations weren't fellowshipping and very welcoming the new members. It was thought at the time to keep all those new member's together, along with their excitement and energy. We held Sacrament mtg in our apartments with the newly baptized. That was the only meeting. No block or correlated meetings back then. Opening song and prayer, sacrament, and some elder would give a 2min talk, closing song and prayer.

I remember being told at zone or mission conferences not to mention it in our letters home as it wasn't kosher with church policy to hold our own church services while we had a ward or branch already in the area. They didn't want the word getting back to SLC what we were doing.

Definitely caused hard feelings for the current and older members in local leadership.

No better words to describe it than cult within a cult.

Can you remember being told NOT to mention the dendo-shos(church in the apartments). This new "trial" program that we're trying, in letters home, botchan? Or is my mind playing games with me?

I don’t remember that specifically, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I was in a dendosho for the last several months of my mission, so I hadn’t attended normal services for ages when I returned to my home ward. Come to think of it, I hadn’t associated with many adults either.

A quick flashback: We had a baptism one day in the temporary font on the balcony of our fourth floor apartment. (We had dragged the font from the mission office, through Shinjuku Station, onto the Odakyu Line and up four floors of stairs.) Everything went as planned. The witnesses, with their heads stuck out windows because they couldn’t fit onto the balcony, made sure the prayer was said correctly and no toes stuck up. And the whole thing was witnessed by a very bewildered worker on a telephone pole not a meter from the balcony. He could have done the confirmation right there if he’d had the priesthood.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2022 10:35PM by botchan.

Were either of you in Japan in the decade after Groberg?

I ask because I've seen old clips of the comedian (and later movie director) Beat Takashi making fun of Mormon missionaries; it was a staple of his TV performances for many years. What you describe--carrying fonts around, baptisms on balconies--shows quite clearly what a bad impression the missionaries of that time made on the Japanese and hence why the church has never recovered in that country.

Yes I was. “Do you believe in God?” “Do you want to be baptized?” I embarrassedly watched it all. Of course it wasn’t aimed only at the Mormons you know. He was mostly making fun of the JWs you know. (Or so I told myself.)

What a cruel thing it was that Mormons did to such a wonderful country and culture.

You’re going to make me run away and hide in shame.

Looking back, we were just kids, many of us torn between following our leaders and following our consciences, and probably not doing a very good job of either.


When I first arrived in Japan the mission had just been created, and Groberg had arrived just a little before. Things were still being run the Price/Tanaka way. We went to a normal ward and spent a lot of time with the members. We spent our hours riding our bikes and knocking on doors. As unproductive as we were, I felt like I was a missionary.

When I left two years later, I’m not sure what I felt.

You guys survived, left the church, and have returned to the scene of the crime to contribute both to Japan and to US-Japan relations. It could have been much worse all around.

I frankly think the church leadership has no idea how much good they've done inadvertently, through the missionaries that they gave up for lost.